The Promise of Joy
by Quotemaster2000
Summary: It took a long time, but Joy kept her promise to Bing Bong.


The Promise of Joy

The Orion 13 spacecraft soared miles above the lunar surface. The craft was cylindrical, with a cone-shaped nose and two wing-like solar panels jutting out from the center of the cylinder. Docked to the conical nose was a boxy lunar lander with four spider-like legs stretched out as if reaching forward. The commander of Orion 13 had named it the Flyer.

The Flyer released from the Orion, and with a blast from the thrusters began to pull away. With another blast, the lander slowly started to rotate its legs toward the moon and began to fall out of orbit, leaving the Orion behind in orbit. Several minutes passed as the lander descended to the surface of the moon. Finally, as the capsule was only a few feet from the ground, a thruster blast cushioned its landing in a cloud of gray lunar dust that seemed to settle in slow motion.

Inside the lunar lander, Commander Riley Andersen reported, "Houston, the Flyer has landed."

The four crew members climbed into the airlock and began pulling on their spacesuits. Riley looked around at her crew. First, there was Pavel Ivanov, a Russian test pilot. He was an older man with a distinguished career in the Russian Air Force. Next was Marc Laurent, a French geologist. He had spent his career studying moon rocks and was excited to see them on the moon in person. Finally, there was Sun Li, a Chinese physicist. She was very serious and did her best to hide her enthusiasm, though she was very proud to have been selected for this opportunity and had a variety of experiments to conduct on the moon that she was looking forward to. As for Riley, she was an aerospace engineer and had worked hard to make this mission a reality. She felt like her entire life had been leading her to this mission, though she wasn't sure why it was so important to her. It was simply something she had to do. The four of them would be the first people to walk on the moon since Apollo 17, 30 years before Riley was even born.

Riley fastened her helmet and looked to the rest of the crew. They were ready. Sun Li closed the hatch between the airlock and the main cabin, and the airlock began to depressurize. Riley moved to the outer hatch. She was excited, but also a little scared. The airlock decompression cycle completed. This was it. Riley reached for the handle to open the airlock.

Inside Riley's mind, her five emotions watched in anticipation as Riley reached for the handle. At the center of the control panel, Joy eagerly leaned forward, her eyes wide. Just as Riley was about to grab the handle, she hesitated. Joy looked to her right. Fear had his hands on the controls.

"Are we sure this is a good idea?" Fear asked, looking around to the other emotions. "This is the moon! There's no air out there!"

"Fear," Joy sighed, "there's no air in here anymore either. The airlock's already depressurized."

"But what if something goes wrong?" Fear said. "Maybe we shouldn't do this."

"Not this again," said Anger, at the far end of the console. He started toward Fear, pushing Sadness and Joy out of the way. "We didn't work this hard and come this far just to chicken out now!" Anger took the controls from Fear. "Let's do this!"

The emotions watched as Riley grabbed the handle and opened the hatch. She looked out to see the ladder reaching down to the dusty surface of the moon. As Riley climbed down the long ladder, Sadness looked to Joy.

"You did it, Joy," Sadness said. "You took Riley to the moon, just like you promised."

Joy sighed. "I'll be right back," she said, and dashed off to her locker. She returned a moment later with a purple bag with a candy pattern on it. Sadness recognized it immediately. Joy pulled a yellow memory orb out of the bag.

It was a few days after the Andersen family had moved to San Francisco. The moving truck had finally arrived, and all the furniture was in the house, but there were still boxes stacked everywhere. While Riley's dad was at work, Riley and her mom were unpacking in the living room.

The five emotions watched the mundane activity from the control panel.

"This is so boring," said Disgust. "Why do we even need all this stuff anyway? Can't we just get new stuff?"

"Exactly!" exclaimed Fear. "The moving truck went to Texas! Texas! Do you know what they have in Texas? Tarantulas! Scorpions! What if some of them got into the boxes? What if they laid eggs? What if the eggs hatch and tarantulas and scorpions crawl into the bed in the middle of the night?"

"But what about Riley's hockey trophies, and her pictures of her friends?" asked Sadness. "Riley would be sad without those."

Joy wasn't really paying attention to what was going on. She hadn't quite been herself since she and Sadness had returned to Headquarters. She was constantly thinking about Bing Bong and how the forgotten imaginary friend sacrificed himself so that Joy could save Riley. All Bing Bong wanted was another imaginary adventure to the moon with Riley like they had when she was younger. Joy had promised Bing Bong she would try to take Riley to the moon for him, but she had no idea how to keep that promise. Joy had tried everything she could think of to recall a memory of Bing Bong so that Riley could remember him, but every trace of him seemed to have disappeared. He had been completely forgotten. All that was left was the purple candy-decorated bag Bing Bong had carried. Joy kept it safely stored in her locker.

Riley came across a box with her name written on it. She didn't remember it and it looked older than the boxes they had used to pack. She opened it and found it full of papers.

"Hey, Mom," Riley said, starting to look through the paper. "What's all this stuff?"

Riley's mom looked over. "That box is some stuff I saved from when you were a little girl. I found it when we were packing, but I didn't have time to look through it. Why don't you see if there's anything you remember?"

Riley looked through the papers. There were a lot of old school assignments that she didn't really care to remember. But as she got further down into the box, she began to find drawings from when she was very little. She didn't remember drawing any of them, and wasn't even sure what most of them were supposed to be.

"Ugh, these drawings are all so awful," said Disgust, as Riley glanced through the drawings, setting each one aside in a stack after a quick look. "Why did Mom even save these?"

"I think it's nice," said Sadness.

"I mean, what even is that?" Disgust exclaimed as Riley came to a crude drawing of a pink elephant-like form with a red wagon.

Joy glanced up to see what Disgust was talking about and instantly knew what the drawing was and suddenly grabbed the controls.

Riley was just about to set the drawing aside with the others, but she hesitated. She looked closer at the drawing. Riley's mom noticed that her daughter seemed to have found something interesting and came over to take a look for herself.

"Oh, I remember that," said Riley's mom. "You used to draw that all the time."

"What is it supposed to be?" asked Riley.

"I'm not sure, but it seemed really important to you." Riley's mom pointed to the drawing of the wagon. "That looks like your old wagon. Remember how much you used to play in it?"

"Not really," Riley replied.

"Oh, yeah. It was so cute. You put cardboard wings on it and thought you were flying to the moon."

As her mom went back to unpacking, Riley continued to stare at the drawing, trying to remember anything her mom had told her about.

"Come on," Joy said softly, leaning over the control panel. She looked behind her at the recall tube, hoping that somehow a lost memory of Bing Bong would suddenly appear, but nothing happened. Joy suddenly had a idea.

"Everyone back up for a second," Joy said to the other emotions. The others backed off from the control panel, leaving Joy at the controls alone for a moment. Joy desperately worked the controls to give Riley a feeling of happiness. Riley might not remember Bing Bong, but she could remember finding this drawing.

Even though Riley couldn't remember anything about the drawing she was looking at, somehow just looking at it made her happy. She set the drawing aside by itself and put the rest of the papers back in the box. She folded up the drawing and put it in her pocket.

A new yellow memory orb appeared in Headquarters, rolling along the track. The memory wasn't strong enough to be a core memory, and instead simply rolled into place on the shelves with the other memories awaiting transfer to long-term memory.

Joy ran over to the shelves and grabbed the new memory orb. She couldn't risk letting it go into long-term memory where it might be forgotten someday. She took the orb to her locker and put it inside Bing Bong's bag.

Over the years that followed, Joy realized she could use the memory of the drawing and the happiness it gave Riley to motivate her. At every thought or mention of the moon or space exploration, Joy would fetch that memory and project it. Eventually, Riley began to dream of going to the moon, and that dream stayed with her as she grew up, leading her to a career as an aerospace engineer and eventually becoming an astronaut, all because of the promise of Joy.

As Riley climbed down the ladder to the moon's surface, Joy put the memory of the drawing into the projector. Riley wasn't sure what made her think of the drawing at that moment, but the memory made her happy.

Riley reached the bottom of the ladder and stepped into the gray moon dust. As she stepped away from the ladder, she looked back at her footprints. She realized she was actually walking on the moon, and couldn't help but smile.

"Everything is so gray," said Disgust as Riley looked around at the lunar landscape. "Why did we come here, anyway?"

Riley looked up and saw the blue globe of the Earth above her. All five emotions reacted in unison, "Oooooh!"

Joy watched with pride as Riley began her mission of exploring of the moon with her crew.

"You know, she still won't remember him," Sadness said to Joy.

Just then, a new yellow core memory appeared in Headquarters and rolled down the track.

"I know," said Joy, "but she will remember _this_ , and she wouldn't be here without him."

Joy had kept her promise.


End file.
